Hey neighbor! My name is Evan S. Porter. I live in East Cobb with my wife and two daughters, and just by knowing that, you can probably guess a few things about me. Yes, I drive a white Honda Odyssey minivan (with absolutely no embarrassment at all). I love date nights in downtown Roswell — especially Deep Roots wine tasting room and dinner at Osteria Mattone. My family and I spend an absurd amount of time at Mabry Park and strolling the shops at The Avenue. If you ask me, summers are for High Noons at the Mountain Creek Pool pool and lazy afternoons at School House Brewing, but when it’s rainy or cold, you might find us taking shelter at Altitude Trampoline Park instead. One thing you might not know about me, though, is that in addition to being a typical East Cobb Dad, I’m also a local author!
In 2021, after having been stuck in the house with my kids for way too long, I felt the itch to start a creative project — something to keep my brain from turning into jelly more than it already had. I also had a lot of complicated feelings about parenting swirling around inside me. So, more or less on a whim, I sat down and started writing a book about being a dad.
That first rough draft eventually became my debut novel, Dad Camp. It’s a hilarious and heartwarming story about a loving dad who drags his eleven-year-old daughter to ‘father-daughter week’ at a remote summer camp—their last chance to bond before he loses her to teenage girlhood entirely. It’s everything I think and feel and know, and wish I knew, and everything I love and am afraid of about fatherhood. But I also think the book will speak to moms, and caregivers of all kinds, or anyone that grew up with a great dad.
I hope you’ll pick it up, and you might even find a signed copy hiding among the shelves at Bookmiser or Barnes & Noble! In the meantime, I’ll probably be in the Starbucks drive-through line getting cake pops for my kids or spending half my salary on the claw machine at Westfield Tavern. See you around!
